Opinion

Leave Twitter

I think it’s about time for everyone to leave twitter. Today I unfollowed every account on Twitter after following as many as I could on Mastodon (minus the twitter feed instances). I removed references to Twitter from my blog and I’m not even going to link my account here, it’s been locked.

Image showing my now locked Twitter profile with 0 following.

I really feel at this point that even visiting Twitter to “watch the dumpster fire” is providing opportunity for revenue, either directly or indirectly, to a social media site that now has the following characterstics:

  • Due to layoffs now, Twitter now lacks proper staff for moderation and protection of users, leading to the endangerment of:

    Minorities
    Members of the LGBTQ+ community and their allies.
    Children
    Any group facing persecution or threat to their life including but not limited to religion, sexual orientation, or political ideology.
    Victims of violence or abuse.
  • In addition to being unstable is likely now filled with unauthorized access to its infrastructure and cannot be assumed secure. Your personal data shared on Twitter either through private tweet or DM is at risk.
  • As of March 7th, 2023, Twitter is now a proven platform for ableism.
  • Elon Musk has turned Twitter into some sort of weird capitalist “banana republic” of which he’s the dictator being propped up by investors of questionable reputation.
  • Twitter is increasingly a source of Russian and Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
  • The troll and bot problems are not solved, they are worse.
  • Elon Musk has encouranged abusive behavior from trolls and is engaging in it himself and with much gusto.
  • The algorithm is tweaked to push Musk’s agenda.
  • Any critics who attempt to speak out against Musk are attacked by his legion of fans, who seem to fit neatly into a strange tech-bro species unclassifiable by science.

I’m sure I can keep going about this ad-nauseum, expanding upon each bullet point citing multiple examples, but Twitter is Going Great! has a timeline with lots of citations that i believe backs me up.

Don’t close your account, you should absolutely keep it open as a stake of your claim, to prevent impersonation, but stop engaging with twitter, make a post to your followers about what you’re doing and why, and then lock your account.

In other words, stop enabling the freedom of reach, of a narcissistic and abusive charlatan. Stop enabling this:

Elon Musks tweet claiming that a worker he fired with muscular dystrophy was using it as an excuse.

IT, ADHD, infosec, and random junk.